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The Emoji Movie First Impressions
Everybody:OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. But seriously... it um... it bad. So, I said that I was going to give this movie an animated atrocity review ever since I first heard of it. In short, I predicted that it would be bad. I saw it, and yeah, it's bad, and I'm gonna do a review of it when it comes out because that's what I do. I think most people predicted it was going to be bad. You know, people have been joking... "an emoji movie, that's like if they made a movie based on..." and then no one could make a punchline because The Emoji Movie is the punchline. This is literally the end result/bottom of the barrel when it comes to Hollywood's creative sterility. You can't get any lower. Well, maybe if you made "the advertisement movie"... actually no, because The Emoji Movie IS The Advertisement Movie, and that might be what I call it from now on. And we'll get to that. Now, anything has the potential to be good - even an Emoji Movie, but it needed a different producer, different plot, different characters, a different method of funding, and an entirely different reality. Let's talk about The Lego Movie, because that's where the discussion often goes when you talk about The Emoji Movie and why it exists. "The Lego Movie was good, why couldn't The Emoji Movie be good?" The Emoji Movie couldn't be good, probably because The Lego Movie was good. This is going to take some explaining. Let's ignore the source material, as Legos are a creativity toy and are nostalgic for many people and etc. The Lego Movie had something to prove when it came out. There was no precedent. It was a weird experiment that had no rights to succeed, but it did. And like other things in that category, like South Park ''and ''Ren & Stimpy, studios see that, don't even understand the bare basics of the reasons that it was a success and decide that it's a quick cash-in. In essence, I knew that in production, The Lego Movie would become a justification and an excuse to put no effort into what we got. What The Lego Movie told studios and executives is not "if you put enough effort into any concept, it can succeed." It told them "hey, we can make a movie about any stupid concept and they audience will buy it." And apparently they did, as The Emoji Movie is a financial success. Which means sequels in the animated world. It's another one of my predictions. The main problem with The Emoji Movie is not that it's poorly written, poorly concepted, annoying, and nothing more than an advertisement. It is all of those things. But the main problem with The Emoji Movie is that it's soulless. It's the most soulless movie... no, it's the most soulless anything that I've seen. Nurm of Teh Nurth has more of a soul than this thing. I'm not going to say that The Emoji Movie lacks so much originality that there wasn't one single solitary thing that I haven't seen in an animated movie before. What I am going to say is that The Emoji Movie lacks so much originality that there wasn't one single solitary thing that I haven't seen in an animated movie in the last ten years. Most notably there's The Lego Movie, Inside Out, and Wreck-It Ralph. There's even the concept. This sounds like a parody that The Simpsons would do be hip and trendy. The "stereotypical animated film" at this point is "gee golly gosh, what is my x'' doing when I'm not watching?" It's not a bad idea, but it's been massively overdone at this point. You need to be as high quality as Pixar to make this thing work, or else you're going to be accused of ripping off Pixar. Formulaic doesn't begin to describe the movie. Besides "stereotypical animated film plot" we've got a main character who doesn't fit in and goes on a quest to fit in; an annoying comic relief that needs to die; a dance scene at the end; a princess that wants something more from life; a "secret" villain that doesn't even pretend to be secret; and even for good measure, we've got a princess that wants something more. Have you ever seen an animated film in your life? You've probably seen ''The Emoji Movie, you just didn't know it at the time. The Emoji Movie exists to sell products, something that I thought we all decided was a very bad thing to do in the 1990's. It feels like one of those toy-driven 80's cartoons, I swear. You've all seen and heard of what happens, I'm sure. It's a movie meant to sell Emojis; the ultimate goal is to get to Dropbox; they go through Just Dance and Candy Crush. There is not one point of the movie where I didn't feel like it was trying to sell me something, directly. And I do want to take an aside to mention the "it's for kids" excuse. In my opinion, that makes it worse. It's mere existence is sell things to children. Oh yeah, and you gotta pay money to buy them this movie/take them to this movie for the movie to tell them to buy more shit. There's a reason that television standards stopped cartoon television shows from being nothing more than a 22 minute commercial - which I guess doesn't translate to movies. It's just a shitty thing to do, for starters. And hey, if the kids accept The Emoji Movie as a standard, it'll make them prime for more movies that are just two-hour commercials. I reiterate, yes kids aren't really going to be too picky on what cartoons that they want to watch. This is the exact reason why we need to be extremely cautious, skilled, and meticulous in what we make for them. If this wasn't bad enough, not only is The Emoji Movie nothing more than an advertisement. It's a bad advertisement. Not in the way that made me not want to buy the product, but I mean it literally did not understand the product that they were selling. First of all, the main character is a teenager and the product is geared towards teenagers. The writing and... just the tone of the movie feels like it's aimed at five-year-olds. The forced slang and lingo comes across as grating and embarrassing. I felt embarrassed for everyone who had anything to do with some of the dialogue in this movie. I don't own a cellphone, but one that I know is that the people who have them... replace them every few years when a new model comes out. It's pretty much how cellphones work. Once you realize that, the movie has no tension. All of the lives saved in the movie are going to be gone in a few years once the phone becomes obsolete. Not only that, but Gene is a... second generation Emoji. Okay. Emojis as a concept were invented in 1999, and the phone itself could only have existed for... what? Two years? Five years maximum? Do they not know how phones work? Actually, no they don't. According to this movie, trolls are just a program that you can delete. Phones have firewalls, apparently. Hacking is just guessing a password again and again until you get it right. And a factory reset can be... halted and reversed just by unplugging the thing. The eggplant emoji is considered one of the least popular emojis. Sure, this can mean that Alex himself doesn't use that emoji, but 1.) it's still a misunderstanding of emoji, and 2.) it just adds to the confusion of a second generation emoji. Honestly Jailbreak just guessing random words like Alex's birthdate and favorite food is probably what pissed me off. Guessing someone's password over and over until you get in is not "hacking" and anyone who has ever picked up a computer knows that. On top of that, it doesn't get teenagers either. Alex's phone password is his crush's name. Because a teenager would never worry that someone else would guess that and that would lead to more embarrassment. He's nervous about talking to this girl, after he has her phone number and she sent him a text. Not to mention the dialogue. Honestly, Alex might be the worst part of the film. Remember Inside Out and how much detail they gave to who Riley is. Her life and her hobby. It was important to the movie because it was important to the characters. Alex is... incidental at best. Any information you learn about him is told to you. I know that he has a phone, he has a crush, he had a Marine biology report, and he went to Paris. And nothing else. I don't know his hobbies or interests. And anything they took from Inside Out just serves to remind you how well that movie worked and how much this didn't. Riley wasn't there just because. The Emoji Movie doesn't logic very well, as established by the Emojis giving birth thing. Right off the bat we get three Meh emojis - father, mother, and son. However... only one emoji is needed to do the job. This isn't consolidated or explained. The most important emojis, like Smiler, get plenty of time away from the phone screen when it would be important for them to do their job. And this is just the small stuff. They need to go through all of these apps to get to Dropbox - which, I must remind you is virus-proof - except they don't because they can just go around. "Back before the recent update, female Emojis could only be princesses" she says while Smiler, the leader of the Emojis, and stated in-universe to be the first emoji, is female. They did not proofread this in the slightest. I guess you can't when you want to be "the fastest made animated movie ever made." Which is like bragging that you have the cheapest cost beef in any restaurant ever. It's not something to be bragging about. All of this time and I haven't even started on the characters. Gene... has emotions, and the whole movie is about him becoming who he was truly meant to be... a meh. Lemme talk about that. It's nearly impossible to get invested in anything about Gene. He wants to become a meh. It's like seeing a knight go on a quest to be a farmhand. It's kind of... opposite of what movies are. Now this could work if the movie was... a parody, but we're supposed to take his quest seriously; at least as seriously as Gene does. Sure, he gets past it by the end, but there's little to no reason to want to see him succeed. If he succeeds, it's a bad thing. The movie's message is about expressing yourself, and yet Gene goes on a quest to remove his own emotions. It's confused, narrative. Hi-Five is this movie's "character who needs to die" which is what I'm going to call animated comic relief movie characters now until the big studios realize that they need to stop putting these into movies. Robin Williams' genie is not a thing that most people can pull off. Stop trying to pull it off. It wouldn't be so bad, except now it has to be in every single animated movie. And it's always the worst. Like Moana. Did the movie need the chicken? No. It didn't need the chicken, and the movie would have been better without the chicken. Worst part of the movie. Did Cars need Mater. No. Worst part of the movie. Hunchback's Gargoyles. The list can go on and on. There's a way to make it work, but it so rarely does nowadays. And then there's Jailbreak. She's gonna make the review really fun. So, when Hi-Five mentions that Jailbreak is a hacker... I'm sorry, I mean "hacker", in the very next statement, he says that she once helped a princess escape. Like, it's literally the next line. I knew the twist going in, but I was honestly shocked by how bumbling that line was. Once again, it's like a parody "I really love you. I hope you don't die in the end." But yeah, she's a princess who wants something more from life. And she's really political about it too. To the point where... she feels like a strawman, like Femme Fatale from Powerpuff Girls, but... serious. It's so hamfisted, and just... awkward. I love it how the movie thinks that she's the very first princess that wanted something more from life. And then there's a hamfisted love plot between her and Gene... I think. It's not very well done. **** I hated this movie. Like really hated it. "But it's harmless." I mean, sure, it's not going to beat the shit out of me, if that's what you're wondering. But it's going to tell Hollywood and Sony that they can get away with whatever garbage that they want. It's going to lead to more movies becoming laced with this insidious advertising crap. It's not going to help the bottomless pit that movie creativity is in. So... how bad? Well, it's worse than Nurm of the Nurth because I actually felt that someone in that movie wanted to be doing something in that movie. Worse than Mars Needs Moms because that at least tried to push forward technology. Worse than Elf Bowling because that at least did something unique. It had things that I haven't seen in other movies. The Emoji Movie doesn't have that. That just leaves Drawn Together: The Movie: The Movie, and honestly it's a close call. Giving the Drawn Together Movie some credit, it was aimed at adults, and it was spared from the theaters. But both of them are the animated film equivalent of a middle finger. Drawn Together Movie puts as much effort as possible into flipping off the audience, while The Emoji Movie puts as much effort as possible into doing nothing which is a middle finger of its own. I'd rather watch The Emoji Movie again that Drawn Together: The Movie, but I'd rather The Drawn Together Movie to exist than The Emoji Movie. I give both of these movies a -27, out of starfruit because it doesn't matter which is worse. The only reason anyone should see either of these movies is to make a review, basically stating "don't do this." *** But... there's always that question. Could it have been good? I mean, if it had people who actually cared what they were doing. Well... you know what, yes. Make it a parody of animated movies, Sausage Party style. Make it a movie in response to the trends of animated films - the princess that wants more; the annoying comic relief that needs to die; the "trying to be hip with the kids and failing"; the standard animated movie formula. If this movie had some sense of self-awareness and basically treated the subject material as a joke, it could have been really funny. Sure, it still wouldn't have been original, as Sausage Party would have beaten them to the punch, but it would have been something. This movie would have been able to make some kind of impact. Like I said, just saying "The Emoji Movie" already feels like it's a parody of animated films. But of course, they couldn't do that because they sold their soul to every single buyer in existence. It has all of the ingredients of a good spoof movie though - a stupid as hell premise based on the stereotypes of the genre; all of the cliches and tropes of that genre; and a knowledge of films in that genre. But instead, we've got a movie about the Wal-Mart logo trying to sell things to you. I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone. Even if you like bad movies, because it's biggest issue is its soullessness and cliches. It's not "funny bad" if that's what you were hoping for. It's just dull and painful. Review coming in October. Category:Miscellaneous